


White Rabbits

by intheKnickoftime



Category: Purple Hyacinth (Webcomic)
Genre: Alice in Wonderland quotes, Gen, Heck yes, I am not quite sure what this is but hey, I suspect this may be incoherent but. ah, Literary References, and lost- also like Alice, introspection time, some helping of angst, there are book quotes, they are all confused- like Alice, they need hugs badly, we love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:41:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24907042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intheKnickoftime/pseuds/intheKnickoftime
Summary: Our main characters are all trapped, in one way or another.Are they the rabbits- running away from, or perhaps toward, something?Or are they chasing the rabbit- some goal they can’t quite reach?...in all honesty, I don’t know. I just wanted to Use Quotes. :)
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White (vaguely), more vague connections/mentions than actual relationship stuff here
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	White Rabbits

**Author's Note:**

> Knick publishing fics late at night after writing them solely in google docs on a phone: the first work in a saga.
> 
> All quotes at the beginning of the characters’ passages are from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

**I. Kym**

_“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”_

As a child, Kym had never quite understood this line.

The days were sunshine and watermelon, walking to the 11th precinct to meet her brother and walking back with his hand clutched tightly in her smaller one.

Those days were predictable in the best way, in a warm way that she hadn’t expected to change.

And then things _had_ changed, and now looking back on that day ten years later? Kym stared at the page of this book, a book she hadn’t read in a long time, and found herself torn between the urge to burst into laughter and the urge to burst into tears, looking at the words written there.

_I was a different person then._

That was true.

She had been innocent- unaware of how cruel people could truly be, holding the hand of a hero shaped like her brother.

That was long gone.

And even if she could go back? She wouldn’t. That would not change the loss that lingered still, in the frozen face of her brother’s old pocketwatch and the family photos that remained in their home.

Going back would not help her- it would blind her once more, dulling her aim and her senses. It would not help the citizens she was supposed to protect- hopeless though it seemed at times, with the Scythe an ever-present threat.

She had been naive- now she was ten years older, ten years wiser, with ten years’ worth of scars and broken edges- not that she let those show.

_It’s no use going back._

\- - - - -

**II. Lauren**

_“She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).”_

It has often been said that hindsight is twenty/twenty.

That was true enough, Lauren supposed.

Though then again, in this case, so had her foresight. She had known from the start that shaking hands with an assassin could end nothing but badly.

And yet. 

Here they were again, forced together this time, and she wondered if she was not so sorry after all. If she had never made the deal, she would never have known Kieran- never could have pegged the archivist for a traitor. 

But on the other hand, had she never met Kieran, Lune would never have been formed, and he could not have been assigned to kill a pair that did not exist.

She wasn’t entirely sure which part of his mission was which- and how closely related they were. Perhaps she would ask. Perhaps he would-

Wait.

No.

She wasn’t supposed to want to talk to him.

It would end nothing but badly. Hindsight had confirmed what she already knew. She had the bruises on her neck to prove it.

(She also had the remnants of stitches on her arm, and tried not to remember this.)

Lauren was smart enough, her instincts sharp.

They had told her first to not associate with the assassin, no matter how tempting his offer.

Now- she was not sure.

Even as she told herself that it was better to leave well enough alone- excellent advice, she felt, really- she found her footsteps tracking toward the archives.

Perhaps someday she would be able to follow her own advice.

\- - - - -

**III. William**

_“But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make_ one _respectable person!”_

Lieutenant William Hawkes would not name the cause of the deepening bags under his eyes- he would only vaguely state that he was dealing with something, but that he could handle it, really.

This was a lie.

The golden boy, the trusted lieutenant, the stable son- the anchor for everyone except himself.

Trying to present a calm from for others, offering advice and support, had left him the most unmoored of all.

Spying for Hermann, worrying for Kym, caring for his ailing mother- even Lauren, his lifelong friend, had been behaving strangely as of late, one more thing that was _off_ in a world that seemed to have been set spinning.

Perhaps his concern for others was his own way of shoring up those walls, distracting himself from the fact that he was cracking at the foundations.

_There’s hardly enough of me left_.

But they didn’t need to know that. None of them did.

Perhaps there was no use in pretending. But he tried, nonetheless.

\- - - - -

**IV. Kieran**

_“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice._

_“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”_

If you had asked Kieran weeks ago how this quote fit into his own story, he would have laughed and said that he was, of course, the Cat. Mysterious and beguiling, watching from trees and speaking in riddles.

“Not crazy,” he had said to Lauren on the bridge so long ago. “Just extremely desperate- which you definitely are.”

Indeed, he had thought her quite mad to agree to his proposal at first- and wondered if he might be a little bit mad as well, for suggesting it to begin with.

_“We’re all mad here,”_ the Cat had said, in the pages of a book he had on his shelf but had not opened in years. _“I’m mad. You’re mad.”_

_How do you know I’m mad?_

He had seen the flame in the officer’s eyes, a wild sort of determination, burning both hot and cold, rage and grief flaring simultaneously. He marveled that she had not been torn apart by it long ago.

Now, however- he rather felt that their roles had been reversed. He was an assassin become an archivist, an imposter, and when Lauren had entered the archives that first night, stretching leisurely against the doorframe, golden eyes pinning his- she had felt every inch like the Cat in their story.

_You must be mad, or you wouldn’t have come here._

Perhaps he was.

_I’m mad. You’re mad._

Perhaps they both were. Perhaps both halves of Lune had a part of the Cat in them, along with a bit of Alice too- out of their depth, immersed in a web.

(Or possibly a rabbit hole.)

(But this was not Wonderland.)

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been a little while since I posted here, hasn’t it?
> 
> As for where this came from: I remembered that Kym likes reading and went hunting for books that could potentially exist within Ardhalis. I never did get my answer, instead falling down the rabbit hole (haaaa) of Alice in Wonderland quotes, but hey.
> 
> Did I intentionally set the characters’ sections to be in ascending age order? yyyyes absolutely. I totally didn’t only notice this when editing/finalizing. Ahem.
> 
> I’m not sure this is quite coherent, but certainly had fun with it! Hope you all can make something of this.
> 
> Kudos and comments are milk and cookies- specifically of the eat me/drink me varieties ;)


End file.
